


And Back Again

by tanktrilby



Category: Free!
Genre: AU, Family Fluff, M/M, Rin is the World's Greatest Dad, parenting, sort of kidfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1341442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin's return to Haru's life is both smoother and more confusing than he expects. AU, set in Rin and Haru's late twenties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Back Again

The sunrays dancing along the shimmer of the water whips up starbursts of color in the edges of Haruka’s vision, a deep tranquil blue to a cool mossy green. Further, the still, unmoving mirror of the deeper parts of the ocean throw back the reflection of another clear sunset.

When the train dwindles to a halt, Haruka steps out, and takes a deep, slow breath, letting the salt and quiet of the station air down into his lungs. He checks his phone -a recent habit, one encouraged by pretty much everyone who knew him- and opens the message that vibrated his jacket earlier.

 _running late at work won’t be able to make it sorry haru,_ says Makoto.

Haruka sighs. The train begins pulling away, sluggish and shuffling, and he begins walking back home on his own. He’s not thinking about anything in particular- the ocean a lingering, anticipatory presence in the back of his mind- when he freezes mid-step, half-convinced he’s hallucinating.

Vivid red hair, bright enough to burn, in need of a proper haircut, wearing an oversized jacket and an impatient expression. A pale young boy with his hands clasped behind his neck and radiating enthusiasm, although that may have been Haruka’s imagination.

It wasn’t him, of course- Haru draws closer and the sight adjusts itself, losing the rounded sepia edges of memory and giving itself hard, palpable angles. The boy’s eyes are a bright blue, not red, and his grin looks safe and free of challenge. All the same, it’s hard not to be taken aback as the child approaches him with naked curiosity. He looks straight up at Haru, confident, questioning.

“Hello,” Haru says, unable to stop himself.

A bright grin. “Hello.”

The voice, too, is right. Maybe a little higher than expected. He looks smaller, too.

“You look lost,” the child says before Haru can gather himself. He’s squinting up at Haru, assessing. “You shouldn’t be here alone. Dad said.”

There’s an upward lilt to his words, a soft childlike cadence that doesn’t fit well with memory. Very small, then.

“You’re alone,” Haru points out before he knows what he’s doing.

The child shakes his head, bangs swaying to and fro. “Dad got a call, so he told me to stay here for a bit,” he confides seriously. “It’s okay, ‘cause I’m big enough to take care of myself now.”

Haruka doubts this. His unvoiced disbelief must show on his face, because the kid picks it up -which means he’s frighteningly astute- and glowers. “I am! Dad said!”

Haruka is starting to sense a theme here. “You wait here for Dad, then,” he says, and the boy nods.

Haru is about to move away when it occurs to him to ask the boy’s name.

_“KAORU!”_

The kid waves frantically, grinning. “Over here, Dad!”

There’s a split second of calm, before a hurricane of red appears in front of them. Haruka watches the scene unfold with a sense of languorous stretched-out fatalism, his stomach tightening and mind slowing. The wash of red calms to reveal a long-unseen face.

Matsuoka Rin.

Haruka is immediately struck by the impossibility of the situation - the wind has a familiar bite to it, one that Haru has always associated with the bare, reaching arms of an empty cherry blossom tree. So it’s roughly fifteen years since Haru last saw Rin, and they haven’t talked, and Rin hasn’t written, and yet here he is, standing in Iwatobi station as if he’d never been away. Rin, dressed in a dark jacket and jeans and hugging and scowling at a miniature of himself that Haru now realizes has to be his son.

 Rin, who went to Australia. It sounds like a fairytale in his head.

Of course he knows better. Connecting the twelve-year-old who waved him goodbye and the man before him now is the career of an four-time gold-medalist in the Olympics. The entirety of Japan watched the heats in Rio, Haru with them, and he, Makoto and Nagisa had celebrated the victory of a dearly-loved, much-missed friend afterward.

Fifteen years. And here he is, back in Iwatobi, scolding his son for wandering off. Haru had been resigned to Rin being a phantom ache, to thinking of Rin as a storm that had come and passed. How tiresome.

“Rin,” he says flatly.

The vague tug of petulance at the back of his mind dies when Rin’s head snaps up, and he goes still.

Maroon eyes widen.

Haruka would roll his eyes, but he can’t deny that he had the same reaction. It’s nice to know it’s mutual.

“Haru,” Rin breathes.

Haruka makes a ‘tch’ sound at the back of his throat, but can’t bring himself to look away. Not yet. “So dramatic,” he complains.

Rin shakes his head slowly, fuzzily. His son looks between them, curious, his hand held in Rin’s. “You know him?”

Rin gives a little laugh, and something in Haru’s chest goes light and airy. Rin still looks disbelieving, like someone poured a bucket of syrup over him, but his eyes are lighting up, catching on Haru’s and staying there, fitting like a glove.

Rin straightens. And straightens.

Oh. He’s very tall. Why hadn’t Haru been expecting that? He looks older, with little creases where his eyes crinkled when he laughed, but it sits well with Rin. The old childish softness has gone entirely- replaced by hard angles and sharp teeth and broad shoulders. Almost a stranger. Except for the telltale shimmer in his eyes and the teeth grazing his lower lip; the thousands and thousands of tells that make mistaking him impossible. 

Such as: 

Rin takes a step forward, then another. His arms come around Haru’s, impulsive as ever, hugging him close and tight. Haru inhales sharply, suspended in time, unsure and hesitant and feeling like he’s twelve again. Rin still smells of chlorine and freshly-mown grass, and he’s warm and solid against Haru, blatantly not a dream.

Rin says his name again, quiet, glad, against his neck, and Haruka feels his shoulders relax. His arms come around Rin, returning the embrace.

Rin’s child is rolling his eyes. “Dad, you sap.”

Rin makes an indignant noise but holds on for a little longer, lingering, before he lets Haru go to glare down at him. Haru feels the pocket of warmth around him stretch, and stretch, overlapping the breathing space he and Rin are sharing again.

The kid yanks on Rin’s jacket and demands a piggyback ride and ice cream. The ensuing argument is swift and diplomatic, and they compromise on Rin carrying the child home from the ice cream stand.

“Haru,” Rin says, grinning and frowning as his son hops from foot to foot. “This little menace is Kaoru. My son.”

There’s an old, worn defiance in his eyes. Not sharp but not blunt, either.

But more than that, there’s a quiet contentment that looks like a mirror-image of the feeling that’s flowing inside Haruka, too. He has questions -fifteen years worth- and he thinks he maybe owes Rin a punch on the face for not coming back for so long, but all that’s background noise to the sound of him shifting back to Rin’s orbit, and Rin to his.

“Kaoru,” he repeats, and two pairs of eyes light up. “I’m Haru, and I’m one of your crybaby father’s friends.”

Kaoru bursts out laughing and Rin blushes like a fire engine, swearing and spluttering.

“Haru,” Kaoru manages between giggles, “come have ice cream with us!”

An arm drapes itself around Haru’s shoulders, familiar, but not, surprisingly, unwelcome. Red eyes slanted to his, a quick-fire exchange of thoughts that left Haru’s spine tingling; _is this okay, are we okay, I really_ did _miss you._

“Yeah, Haru,” Rin says, soft, warm. “Come have ice cream with us.”

*

The insides of his eyelids are painted in hues of red and purple against a glowing orange background. The sound of the ocean is mute, conversation running like water around him, lapping at his feet.

When he opens his eyes, Rin and Kaoru are coming back from the counter, Rin with two cones in hand, Kaoru with one. They flash him sharply identical grins and Rin hands Haru his ice cream.

Kaoru sets to work at once, and Rin hands him a tissue without even looking as soon as the boy smears some on his face. Haru and Rin are slower, thinking the situation over. Haru is still trying to get over the shock of five-year-old Kaoru who presumably has a blue-eyed mother.

He recognizes the wary set of Rin’s shoulders. He doesn’t want this to be awkward, but he needs to know and Rin needs to tell him.

“Where’s his mother?” he asks bluntly.

For a second, Rin’s face goes blank. Haru’s mind screams at him, _you fucking idiot what did you do,_ but before the iron hand around his heart can squeeze too tight, Rin exhales noisily and says, “Jeez, Haruka. Diving headfirst as usual, huh?”

Kaoru says, between slurps, “She died when I was born.” He glances quickly, guiltily, at his father.

The growing panic in his expression eases when Rin ruffles his hair and smiles. “Yeah,” Rin says, lifting his eyes to meet Haru’s. “We were married for two years.”

Haru looks down at his ice cream. It’s melting over, sticky thick liquid reaching to his fingers. He feels dull and clumsy and horrible. “I’m sorry.”

Rin huffs out a laugh. “It’s okay, Haru. Just-“ there’s a silence, and Haru wonders if he blew it, if this was all he would be granted of this new Rin who was strange and irritating and wonderful much like the old Rin, before he laughs again and says, “how’s Makoto? And Nagisa?”

Oh. Rin is covering for him.

Haruka is grateful and a little annoyed. Rin is obviously never going to speak of the way he went utterly quiet when the question was asked. Maybe he’ll ask Makoto to bring it up.

Haruka blinks in sudden remembrance. He hadn’t told Makoto yet.

Rin is laughing at his expression, eyes bright. “You didn’t tell your wife about meeting me? Guess you wanted to keep us all to yourself, huh, Nanase.”

“Makoto’s married,” Haru scowls. “And not to me. So he’s not my wife.”

Rin’s eyes widen. “Really? Anyone I know?”

Haru snorts, because what are the odds? They don’t have any mutual acquaintances past middle school. “No. He met her through work.”

“Where’s he work? What’s her name? Where do _you_ work? What’s Nagisa doing?” Rin says, all in the same breath. He’s smiling again, one that reaches his eyes completely.

Haru fights the urge to smile back. At his hesitance, Rin whines, “Come _on_ , tell me, Haru-chan.”

So Haru does; haltingly, with more detail when Rin presses him for it. He tells Rin about his job as a manga assistant, the graphic novel about the sea that he's working on. He tells him about Makoto and Mikoto and their equally oddly-named kids, and how Ren and Ran are running a business together. He spends almost half an hour on Nagisa alone because Rin seems thrilled by the prospect of Nagisa as an actor, and wants to know all about his weird relationship with Rei.

Rin's the one to bring up swimming. It’s with a teasing, unstrained “What does the water think about you now, Haru?” that gradually builds into an invitation to swim together at Samezuka pool.

Samezuka is, apparently, where Rin works now- a high school with an aggressively successful swimming program. He’s their senior coach, and laments the lack of drive in kids nowadays, while Haru points out that not all of them are single-minded fanatics like Rin was when they’re teenagers. He gets a punch on the arm for that.

The light of the streetlamps filters through the fingertip shadows of leaves on trees by the time they leave. Rin has made the right call by offering Kaoru a piggyback home; within minutes, he’s asleep, softly snoring against the back of Rin’s neck, arms folded around Rin’s shoulders. They walk side-by-side, their arms brushing, Rin still detailing Kaoru’s childhood as they pass through the neighborhood.

Two streets ahead of Haru’s house, Rin draws to a halt. “This is our stop,” he says, gesturing to a door painted red.

Haruka stops too, looking between them and the door. Rin laughs tiredly, and says “Shut up. Gou picked the color.”

Behind him, Kaoru is deeply asleep, chewing on a strand of Rin’s hair. They’re both haloed by the artificial light, and Rin looks like something from a dream, tall and gentle and handsome.

Haru recognizes the odd sweet ache in his chest. It comes before the plunge, before the water reaches for him and lets him be free. Rin is standing very close. Haru can see the darker red of his lashes, the half-quirk of his mouth. Something in him is calling out for Rin, loud and clear and wanting.

“Good night, Haru,” Rin whispers.

Haru draws back. They exchange a smile, soft and quiet.

“Good night, Rin,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”

 


End file.
